


dropping glasses just to hear them break

by straddling_the_atmosphere



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Bathing/Washing, Fluff, M/M, madi is mentioned, this was supposed to be short, thomas hamilton is out here being a saint tbh, world's most awkward dinner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 09:21:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13143693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straddling_the_atmosphere/pseuds/straddling_the_atmosphere
Summary: “He saved me, you know,” Flint says, something in him coming loose now that the words have started, like a leak that has finally cracked inside a glass bottle, liquid spilling out. “After Miranda--” He closes his eyes, not wanting to see Thomas’s face. “He showed me a way through.”There’s a long silence, contemplative. “It sounds like he loved you,” says Thomas, quiet.--John Silver comes back, ten years later.





	dropping glasses just to hear them break

**Author's Note:**

> MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE i blame hailey for this completely
> 
> please enjoy my boys suffering, except for thomas, who is just amused

Flint tells Thomas stories from the last decade without him and it goes like this: every adventure, every devastating loss, minor and major setback, thrill for gold and hunting and treasure--all of it has a hole the size of a three-limbed man. A man Flint calls quartermaster, thief, former partner, but never by name.

It has been years, and Flint has grown out his hair, long and still so red, faint streaks of silver in his beard. Thomas looks at him and sees McGraw, sees _James_ , but Flint looks at himself and sees a man trying to fit onto a face he’s not sure was ever his.

“You never say his name,” Thomas says one day, the warm afternoon sun hitting his hair and turning it burnished gold as he bends over strawberries that he’s chopping up for reserves. His sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, thick ropey scars visible on his forearms, like from manacles pressed too tight to skin for too long.

Flint blinks up from his book, pushing his hair back from his face.

“The man always in your stories,” Thomas says. “John Silver.”

Flint looks down when he hears something rip and makes himself let go of the page on his book, smoothing it down as best he can.

“You loved him, and I can’t tell if you don’t want to tell me because you’re ashamed, or if you’re still grief-stricken over him.”

Flint exhales shakily, the words on the page swimming in front of his eyes. “Thomas,” he says.

Thomas smiles wryly. “Tell me a true story about him.”

“I hardly knew anything about him that was true,” Flint says.

“Oh, sure you did,” Thomas replies. “You know what matters to a man. The inside of him.”

Flint is quiet for a long, long moment. “He betrayed me--many times. But this time it was about money.” He shrugs. At one point, it was always about money. “But he told me this time, when it was just us two. I could have easily killed him.” He remembers the parched dryness of his mouth. The strange wet feeling on his tongue that tasted like iron, his lips so dry they bled. “We hunted sharks that day, the two of us, with that air cleared.” He remembered Silver’s smile, a fierce thing on a face gone delicate in a starved way.

When Flint looks up to meet Thomas’s gaze, he sees a small smile on his face. “That was something true,” Thomas says softly. “That he was brave.”

“Stupid,” Flint corrects.

“Isn’t it the same thing, sometimes?”

“He saved me, you know,” Flint says, something in him coming loose now that the words have started, like a leak that has finally cracked inside a glass bottle, liquid spilling out. “After Miranda--” He closes his eyes, not wanting to see Thomas’s face. “He showed me a way through.”

There’s a long silence, contemplative. “It sounds like he loved you,” says Thomas, quiet.

Flint chokes on--nothing, on his spit, on his fucking _words_ , and Thomas looks startled, eyes wide.

“Oh,” he says, voice soft. “You--you didn’t know.”

“He _didn’t_ ,” says Flint, almost urgent. “He didn’t, Thomas.”

Thomas looks at him, his fingers stained red with strawberry juice, but for a moment it looks like blood, ripe and crimson and dripping, like Silver’s hands after a kill, his rings rusted bronze against his tanned knuckles, and Flint has to close his eyes, breathing shakily.

“James,” Thomas says quietly and Flint presses the palm of his hands to his eyes until he sees red, trying to calm his breathing.

Something soft touches his wrist and he drops his hands, looking at Thomas’s eyes, so blue and calm like the ocean was after a strong storm, clear and perfect. His thumb presses against Flint’s cheek, right next to the corner of his eye. It’s still wet from the strawberries.

“You were always so dense,” he says. “About the people who loved you.” Flint makes a soft noise and Thomas presses their foreheads together, Flint’s eyes sliding shut. “You have told me stories. So many stories, of your adventures as Captain Flint. At the beginning, I think you wanted to repel me, to make me see you as the monster you thought you were.” Thomas is quiet for a long moment, thumb rubbing slow strokes down Flint’s cheekbone, a spot of heat when the rest of Flint is so, so cold.

“As you can see, I’m still here. And your stories have made you transparent to me. You and that quartermaster you called your partner.” Thomas presses his finger to the corner of Flint’s mouth, smile indulgent when Flint tries to catch the taste of the fruit still on his skin. “We do terrible things for the ones we love.”

Then, he pulls Flint in for a kiss, conversation falling to the wayside for the time being.

* * *

James Flint is able to process a lot of concurrent things at once--it was a skill he had as a naval lieutenant, and one he honed as a pirate captain, as a war general. And for all that skill, he somehow still can’t quite wrap his head around one thing--John Silver having loved him.

He knows he loved Silver, that much has always been clear to him. He has not and never will be a man who hides truths from his own self. The opposite though...Flint remembers Silver’s bright, earnest face when he said, _It is her where I am most vulnerable._ Of Madi’s dark solemn eyes and her graceful bearing, a woman worth loving.

“James,” Thomas says, squinting out the window. He’s in the kitchen, scrubbing their pans. His hands, so fine and soft when Flint had first met him, are rough and calloused from hard, toiling work, and the scars on his arms stand out sharp against his skin.

“Mhm?” Flint hums, cupping his hands around a warm cup of tea.

“Didn’t you say your Silver had one leg?””

Flint sits upright, eyes flying open. His cheeks feel hot. “He’s not _my_ \--why are you--is he--” He stands suddenly and barely hears the tinkle of the teacup crash onto the floor, shattering.

“Mm, well, _your_ Silver seems to be hobbling down our pathway as we speak.”

Flint opens his mouth to say something and there’s a few raps on the door. He freezes and Thomas sighs, moving forward to open it.

“James,” he says cheerfully. “Your ghost is here.”

“ _Thomas_ ,” Flint hisses and then Silver steps inside the hallway and whatever Flint was going to say dies inside his throat.

The years have been good to Silver--hair long and curling down his back, faintly streaked with grey that glints white gold in the sunlight, and there are gentle wrinkles around the corner of his eyes, like he’s laughed or squinted too much.

His shoulders are broad, filling out his shirt in a way that they didn’t when he last knew him, and his forearms are tanned and muscled, with a hint of ink disappearing into one sleeve. His rings glitter gold on his fingers, still long and slender, like they belong to someone who should play piano for a living, not man a ship.

Silver’s lips twitch under his mustache, and his eyes are that same piercing blue, like the cloudless blue sky that left them becalmed. It’s not dissimilar to what Flint is feeling now.

“You look remarkably good for a dead man,” he says, eyes unbearably warm for a brief moment before shuttering, leaving Flint adrift.

“Tea?” Thomas says brightly after a long moment of silence, then he heads back into the kitchen, making a louder racket than normal. Silver looks dazed, wearing the face of a man who is just discovering what Thomas is like.

“Is he always....?”

“Yes,” says Flint with a sigh, eyeing him for a long moment. Silver looks tired, bags under his eyes nearly as heavy as they’d been when they’d been becalmed, and now that he’s looking, he can see the lines near the corner of his mouth, made from frowning more than smiling.

When Flint indicates to a chair, Silver moves with the ease of a man who’s spent more time alive without a leg than with one, but when he sits, a pained grimace flashes across his features before smoothing out. Flint’s fingers twitch, wanting to--to bring a bucket of water, to peel that filthy black shirt off of him and see the long gash that’s undoubtedly under it, still bleeding sluggishly.

It isn’t his place anymore.

The silence is deafening, broken only by Thomas rattling around loudly in the kitchen, and Silver squirms a little, staring at his hands. Flint swallows, eyes drawn to his dirt-crusted fingernails, his big palms which he knows to be rough against his skin, the brush of them like a hot brand when he’d snapped the manacles onto his wrists that day so long ago.

They stare at each other, and Flint feels like a man who has been given water at the end of a long journey through a desert. He had forgotten what it was like to have seen John Silver everyday, to wake up in exhausted Nassau filth and the first thing he saw was Silver’s weary but bright-eyed face, his filthy beard and his rough laugh, like the drag of a friendly jungle cat’s sandpaper tongue on your skin, something wild and dangerous but presently tamed.

Silver opens his mouth and then closes it with a soft click.

“What?” Flint asks and he's surprised to hear that his voice is harsh, an anger he thought he'd abandoned simmering deep below the surface.

“Flint,” Silver says, quiet.

Flint exhales, closing his eyes. Thomas drops something in the kitchen, and the noise makes Silver startle half out of his seat.

“Thomas?” Flint calls, not opening his eyes.

“I'm fine!” He says, then appears in the doorway with tea.

“I'm making dinner,” says Thomas, giving Flint a look. Flint stares back at him.

Thomas’s face says, _Talk to him_ , and Flint’s says, _No._

 _Why are you so fucking stubborn?_ Thomas’s face replies.

 _This is how I’ve always been_ , Flint glares back.

Thomas gives him a sharp look and then grins at Silver. Silver stares at him, eyes wide.

“You'll be staying for dinner,” Thomas says.

“I...suppose,” Silver says slowly.

“Good,” Thomas says brightly, and then he shoots Flint a narrow-eyed look before disappearing back into the kitchen.

Silver looks at him then, and Flint stares back. He bites his lip, resigned.

“Just say it.”

Flint furrows his brows. “What?”

Silver’s lip curls into that faint snarl that Flint knows, the smile of the pirate king.

“Fucking _yell_ at me already, Captain,” he snaps.

“You of all people know that that's not what I am anymore,” Flint snarls, and he's standing now, looming over Silver, but somehow he feels like the smallest man in the room, Silver staring up at him with those unflinching eyes.

“I don't regret what I did,” he says, fingers clenching on the arm of the chair.

“I was ready to finish it,” Flint bites out. “Madi and I were ready to--”

“You think I didn’t know that?” Silver says, teeth bared, a jungle cat shedding its tame face. “I did it so the two of you wouldn't die. I did it for you!”

“Is that what you told yourself when you sold me into slavery and left Madi to become a wife instead of a queen?” Flint says coldly.

Silver goes very still, eyes flashing and dangerous.

“I would be very careful of your next words,” he says, voice low.

“Where is she?” Flint asks, reckless and sneering. “Did she stay with you? Did she debase herself to being the wife of the man who took away her people’s war?”

“Fuck you,” Silver says venomously.

“Or did she leave like I said she would? Did she _ever_ forgive you?”

Silver snarls and shoves him hard, lifting himself from the chair. Flint stumbles back, breathing hard, that bloodlust humming under his skin, familiar and alive.

“It's not like you were a saint,” Silver says, standing now, his hair wild, chin sharp and severe. The afternoon sun paints him in sharp relief, like a Caravaggio come to life, mouth a soft, vulnerable thing under his beard and mustache.

“You betrayed me first, back then,” Silver says, voice brittle and sharp, liable to shatter with the wrong touch.

“Oh, says the thief,” Flint says, feeling petulant and dark.

“You said you trusted me and you _lied_. You went behind my back, took fucking _Dooley_ to do it.”

Flint bares his teeth, something dark blooming inside him, and Silver sucks in a breath, balancing himself on the chair. His body seems unreal, faded at the edges and white gold in the sun. The expression on his face is desperate and torn apart, his hands shaking.

Suddenly, Flint remembers Thomas’s face, his kind, knowing eyes, and something inside him flares, bright and open. He says, voice breaking without his permission, humiliating and tremulous, “Did you love me then?”

Silver looks--he looks like no one has ever asked him a question before that he didn't know how to bullshit.

“I--” Silver’s eyes are wide, the whites of them showing. A spooked, scared animal. There has always been something inside Silver that defies definition, that refuses to be categorized and labeled into one thing. Silver is--thief, quartermaster, friend, brother, partner, all in one. And now, he is something else too.

“Yes,” Silver rasps, eyelashes dark and wet. “I loved you.”

Now, he is also lover.

“James,” Thomas says quietly, and Flint has to tear his eyes from Silver’s heaving chest.

“Thomas,” Flint says flatly. Thomas hides a smile.

“Dinner is ready if you two are quite done.”

Flint looks at Silver again, who looks away.

“Alright,” Flint says, anger dissipating as quickly as it came.

Dinner is a quiet affair, Thomas trying to draw Silver into conversation and Silver giving soft, one-word answers. When Flint and Thomas begin to clear, Thomas pulls him aside.

“He looks exhausted,” Thomas says quietly. “Whatever unfinished business you two have can wait until after he bathes.”

“Thomas--”

Thomas gives him a look and Flint’s mouth shuts.

“Draw him a bath,” Thomas says, and his tone is final. Flint has never been able to resist an order from him, and he won’t start now.

* * *

In the bathroom, Flint dips his fingers into the warm water, crouching next to the tub. It smells of rose and lavender, what Miranda used to use when she wanted to feel luxurious--and Flint swallows around a lump in his throat.

There is a distinct wobbling two-step that stops outside the doorway, and Flint looks up to see Silver, the palm of his hand flat on the wall to keep balance.

Flint sits up, wincing as his knees pop, and Silver continues to watch him, eerily quiet.

“I’ll leave you to it then,” Flint mutters, and starts to move past him. A hand curls around his arm and he stops, not looking at Silver. The hand drops, leaving him off balance and cold.

“Can you help me?” Silver asks quietly, and Flint finally turns to look at him. “I have an injury. It hurts to raise my arms.” He looks faintly embarrassed, like there is a memory of shame that he’s now gotten used to.

Flint steps forward, close enough to see the flecks of grey in Silver’s eyes, before he drops his gaze down, hands curling at the hems of his dark, filthy shirt. Silver hisses when Flint peels it off of him, and there’s that cut that Flint knew was there, dried blood blood crusted along his ribs.

“Jesus Christ,” he says as Silver winces. “That’s almost to the bone.”

Whoever stitched it had been haphazard at best, the skin around the wound red and inflamed. Without quite meaning to, Flint presses the flat of his hand to Silver’s abdomen, pinky nearly touching the gash.

Both of them freeze and Flint can _feel_ Silver’s chest hitch on a breath, his own matching it. His cheeks feel hot and he can’t help but fixate on his own hand, long-fingered, freckled, and pale against Silver’s tanned, warm skin, muscles twitching under his palm. He drops his hand after a moment, too slow, fingers dragging gently down his belly, and Silver’s breath catches again, his body swaying forward without thought. Silver goes very still and Flint’s eyes snap up to his, watching his jaw work.

“Thank you,” he says finally. “I’m going to--”

“Right,” Flint says, cheeks flushing hot. “I’ll let you have the room.” Then, he strides out and presses the door closed, leaning against it heavily.

He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to calm his breathing, but all he can see is Silver’s soft, open mouth, and the way he instinctively leaned forward, like he was chasing Flint’s touch.

“Are you going to help him?” Thomas asks and Flint jumps.

“Christ, Thomas, he’s not an invalid.”

Thomas’s eyes are warm.

“I wasn’t saying he was,” he says mildly, eyebrow arching. “I just know how much you struggle to wash your hair alone, and he has considerably more than you. And he’s injured.”

Flint ducks his head, biting his lip, and Thomas reaches out to tuck a strand of hair that had fallen out of its tie behind his ear, fingers soft and cool on his overheated face.

“Go,” Thomas says softly “Put this ghost to rest.” Flint tilts his head up towards him and Thomas presses a gentle kiss to his lips, familiar and perfect.

From the bathroom, comes a muffled cry and Flint jerks back. Thomas smirks, and his face says _I told you so_ more than words ever could. Flint scowls at him and Thomas shakes his head, eyes crinkling at the corners. He kisses him one last time before he shoots him a smile and heads to the main bedroom, the homey space Flint usually shares with Thomas--a soft, large bed and plenty of fur blankets, and a comforting warm body to curl up next to.

Flint stares at the closed door in front of him, torn between the warm things he knows and the right thing, when Silver’s repeated pained moan permeates the walls, and he opens the door.

Silver’s face is twisted into a grimace, a comb tangled in his hair, and he scowls at Flint. “I’m fine,” he snaps. Flint must make a face because Silver immediately says, yanking his comb out of his hair. “I can do it myself.”

Flint shakes his head and pulls a stool up to the tub. “This discussion is over,” he says, taking Silver’s comb before he can protest. Silver squirms just to be an asshole, but Flint knows this Silver--the petulant, young man who didn’t want to take care of his leg, who Flint had to practically sit on in order for him to stay still while he was healing. Flint scoops up a bucket of warm water, waiting patiently for Silver to settle.

“Close your eyes,” he says, and Silver does, immediately so, like he was just waiting for the order. Flint ignores the prickle of heat in his fingers at that, and gently pours the water over his head, Silver tilting his chin up as it runs down his face and hair, dripping into the tub and onto Flint’s pants. The water droplets look like diamonds as they trail down Silver’s neck and rest on his collarbone, glinting green-blue in the sunlight that trails in from the window across the way.

Flint works his fingers through Silver’s hair first, brow furrowing at the tangles in his hair. “How the fuck do you live like this?”

Silver huffs, amused. “You just get used to it,” he says.

Flint grunts, patiently pulling apart each knot, and he is gradually aware of the fact that Silver is boneless in the bath, head lolling back into Flint’s touch. He studies his slack, peaceful face, eyes tracking the way his dark lashes cast long shadows on his cheeks, the way his mouth is half open as he breathes steadily.

From here, he can see the tattoo that wraps its way up Silver’s arms, a winding Gordian knot of ink with no discernable pattern except to be as dizzying as possible, ending just before his collarbones. His eyes skitter along the sharp jut of his hips, the dark dusting of hair that starts below his navel, and he looks away hastily, cheeks red.

“Flint?” Silver murmurs sleepily, and he startles, accidentally yanking at Silver’s hair. He makes a soft apologetic sound when Silver hisses, fingers gently carding through the curls, nails scratching at his scalp. Silver settles easily with a rumbling purr and Flint swallows, hand moving a little lower, gently scraping his fingers along the hair near the nape of his neck just to hear the pleased, guttural noise Silver makes.

He’s not sure why he does it, but Flint finds himself watching as if from a great distance his own hand fist in Silver’s hair, gathering a thick bunch of curls, and tipping Silver’s head back, so Silver blinks up at him, hazy and slow, his mouth half parted. Flint can see the white of Silver’s teeth, the flash of a pink tongue, and he lets out a slow, shuddering breath.

“ _Christ_ , you--” He starts and Silver cranes his neck up to press their lips together, angle awkward, teeth gnashing against one another. Flint tilts his head slightly and suddenly all he can feel is Silver’s warm, wet mouth, the soft bristle of his beard, his damp hand sliding into Flint’s hair, tugging the tie off. He hears himself make a desperate sound as he parts his lips, Silver’s tongue teasing him, dragging along his teeth, and he shifts, turning so he can fit his other hand in Silver’s hair, dragging him close to the edge of the tub, water spilling all over his pants and shirt. Silver kisses like he does everything else--with sharp, desperate hunger and the need to tease and take until something is his--and Flint lets him, matches the intensity with his own, biting at Silver’s lower lip until it swells between his teeth, licking into his mouth like he can consume him, like he can settle in the hollow spaces of Silver’s bones and make a home there.

When they part, it’s with a wet, obscene noise, their breathing ragged. Silver has his fingers curled in Flint’s shirt, and the other around the back of his neck, and Flint still has both hands buried in Silver’s hair, holding him still. He can’t stop staring at the red of his lips, the flush along the bridge of his nose, and the expanding black of his eyes, leaving just a thin sliver of blue.

Their noses brush and Silver shudders, hands spasming in Flint’s shirt. “Flint?” he says, voice very small.

Flint slides one hand down to cup his cheek, thumb hooking under his chin to lift it up, meeting his gaze. They study each other.

“Even after all this time,” Flint says, voice hoarse. “I can’t let go of you. You’ve burned yourself into me.”

Silver trembles in his hold, eyes very wide. “I’ve thought of no one but you for the last ten years,” he whispers. From this close, Flint can see a faint smattering of grey peppering Silver’s beard, and it’s somehow that that makes Flint want to kiss him again. Something on his face must show this, because Silver swallows, adam’s apple bobbing. “Please,” he says, soft.

Flint’s hand tightens briefly in Silver’s hair, and he thinks helplessly that it’s not just Thomas he has trouble saying no to anymore before he kisses him again, something slower than the first, but no less urgent. The sound Silver makes against his mouth is something that will be seared in Flint’s mind forever, needy and high, and Flint licks the noise right off of his lips. Who knows how long they would have done this--sharing wet, filthy kisses that make Flint’s bare toes curl against the floor, when Flint leans too far forward and loses his balance, falling halfway into the tub with a startled shout.

There’s a long silence, Flint’s hand pressed to Silver’s bare chest to balance himself, his hair and shirt soaked. They stare at each other for a moment, until Flint sees Silver’s lips twitch, just barely, and he snorts, Silver’s shoulders starting to shake with laughter.

“Your face, oh my _God,_ ” Silver says gleefully, yelping when Flint stands back up, shaking out his hair and spraying Silver everywhere. Flint tries to keep his face straight, but he can feel his eyes crinkling, looking at Silver’s bright, open expression and wide grin.

There will be long talks, and more fights, Flint knows, and perhaps even more kissing. But now there is time, it seems, for all of that.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me @ tomasortega on tumblr!


End file.
